The funeral of the sun
by sunspears
Summary: Melisandre has a proposition for the Mother of Dragons.


This is less show and more book, but the show is catching up. Written for femslash12 on dreamwidth-my recipient asked for Dany/Melisandre, and I obliged them. I wish A Dance With Dragons had gone down any way but the way it did; call this fix-it fic.

The Red Priestess birthed shadows in the night to destroy Dany's enemies: it was no more horrific than sending her Unsullied to castrate rapists. Within the walls of Meereen, they were never short of things to burn for prayers. Melisandre had come from the east in her fine red silks, her trunk of gold and magic texts borne by a servant Dany saw once, and never again. The dragons sat at wary attention when Melisandre passed; when free, they flew in circles over her head, as though keeping an eye on her.

"In the tongue of Asshai, this is the sun's funeral," Melisandre said, tearing her gaze from the heart of the flame to look up at the sky. She repeated the words in the high, strident speech of her homeland, a distant cousin to Valyrian-she heard the magic, or the potential for magic, singing through the words-and nothing like it at all. The sunset was in purples and golds this evening, and Dany took the seat that had been set out for her. "What are you hiding from, my queen?"

"Missandei, Irri," Dany said. "everyone who means me well."

"And so, you come to me, who may not?"

"You don't mean me ill," Dany said, rubbing her eyes.

"Do I?"

She considered it, staring into the fire, working through the old arguments. Melisandre was not interested in converts to R'hllor (not interested _yet_, Dany's advisors warned her), and she was not interested in riches, or in the politics of the city. She had come like Barristan Selmy, to give herself into the service of the true queen of Westeros. She was a killer, and a prophetess; Dany had had good traffic with neither, but only forbade the latter. A queen needed an assassin, perhaps. _A poisoned blade,_ Selmy had said, shaking his head while Dany sat at Melisandre's bedside after a long night, _keep your hand on its hilt, my queen._

"You don't," Dany said. "You ask for nothing, and give me everything."

"I ask nothing of you." Melisandre threw a scrap of silk into the fire, and waited until the flames died back down to say, "Not, 'how will you deal with the Yunkai?' Not 'when will Rakharo return?' 'Have you eaten this day, my queen?'"

"You mean to say that you don't care?"

"I _do_," Melisandre said, "I do." Into the fire, a pinch of herbs; Dany kept her eyes on Melisandre's face, and not on the things moving in the flame. "One hundred years in the desert, one hundred years on the seas, centuries in the Free Cities-until I heard of the Beggar King, and the girl he carried with him. Daenerys, called Stormborn." Melisandre's ruby glowed at her throat, and she fell to her knees before Dany. "I knew. I waited. You would come."

"Take it off," Dany said, touching the jewel with her thumb. Displays of devotion from tense of thousands were nothing, were to be expected, but she caught herself shrinking from the sudden, desperate love on Melisandre's face-but she was no longer a girl. Melisandre breahed deeply and unclaspsed the ruby from about her throat; it still glowed, even through her closed fist. Beneath the lines of the choker was a ring of old burn scars, banded around her slender neck like lace. Dany reached out and touched the spot where the scars were the darkest, where the ruby had been, then waited.

"You are Azor Ahai, come again," Melisandre said. "In the small land you wish to make your own-"

"The Seven Kingdoms are no small land," Dany said. The caul of burn tissue went down, down, under Melisandre's dress. Her fingers were webbed with it. Only her beautiful face was untouched, white and lovely as milk.

"I have walked the streets of Yi Ti, where the buildings are covered with beaten silver." Melisandre put the choker around her neck again, and the scars faded before Dany's eyes. "The Jade Sea is greener than your Rhaegal, and the sunsets in Asshai would make you weep, my queen. You could have so much more than backbiting lords and endless winter-but you will not be swayed. It is your birthright, and you mean to reclaim it."

She's trying to push you, Dany thought. She'd been gripping the carved heads on the arms of her chair so hard she'd left white marks on her hands, which faded as her anger did. This was no different from bargaining with the Good Masters. "Don't patronize me," she said.

Melisandre drew herself up and kissed Dany's palm-a brief, dry kiss. Her lips were smooth and soft, and the scarring had disappeared entirely. "You are a child," she said. "Your dragons know you for one." With a twist of her hand, Dany freed herself from Melisandre's grip, clenching her first around the touch. "They know, and they will rebel."

"Unless," Dany said, and here was the bargain. This was what Melisandre wanted of her, and Dany felt a shiver of anticipation work its way up her spine and prickle the hairs on her arms and, finally, dissipate on the back of her neck.

"How many people left in this world speak High Valyrian as it was spoken when the true land of your ancestors was the awe and terror of the world?" Melisandre said. "How many people could teach you to control them? I serve the Lord of Light, and your dragons were born by his will."

"By my will."

"By pure accident," said Melisandre, with a smile that touched her eyes in a way that no smile before had. It transformed her face from mere beauty to something eerie and monstrous, and Dany had to look away first, lest she see something in those depths that would turn her to stone-and she sounded as superstitious as a Dothraki mother. "I have destroyed those who meant to harm you."

"I have eight thousand Unsullied to face my enemies," Dany said. The world had gone dark while they talked.

"What of your dragons, when you lose control of them?"

"I won't-"

"You will," Melisandre said. "You weren't meant to master three at once. No one could be expected to, my queen of void, queen of ice, queen of the endless waste-"

"Mother of Dragons," Daenerys Targaryen said. "Breaker of Shackles."

"The Unburnt," said Melisandre, "born again admidst smoke and salt. Let me teach you."

She lifted the hem of Dany's long skirt and, as though she was touching porcelain, pressed her lips to the side of Dany's ankle, then her calf, then the short tendon on the inside of her knee. "Yes," Dany said, halfway between recoiling from the touch and cupping the back of Melisandre's head to pull her closer-pulling her hair, bending her head back. Queenship had scoured the tenderness from her. She would burn the seas from the Straits of Qarth to Sunspear. "You'll be at my side?"

"Always," Melisandre said, her eyes gone cold again, flat as a viper's and hard as flint._ And once for gold, and once more for love,_ Dany thought, and looked into the fire. This would not be one of her treasons.


End file.
